March 10, 2005

Curious George: Guide to Bittorrent for St00pids I don't know anything about bittorrent. WinMX is giving me a hard time downloading Sid Meiers Pirates. Need advice --->

What client do I use? Which client do I avoid? Can I leave the client running all night while I sleep? Is there spyware? What do I watch out for? Yes, I have all security stuff loaded. I use XP. I have Panda antivirus, zonealarm, other security apps. Got lotsa ram & boredband. Someone recommended Azureus on the Dr Who thread. Is that cool? Is it safe? Help me RIAA Kanbiteme, you're my only hope.

posted by Doris 19 years ago
  • 1. Install Azureus, it is the best Bit Torrent client. There is no spyware. There is a configuration wizard with Azuresu that will set your settings. 2. Go to a Bit Torrent tracker web site and click on a download, Azureus should automatically start up. 2.1 My favorite tracker sites: A. Torrent reactor: http://www.torrentreactor.net/ Big, search feature works, but generally slow downloads since there are lots of noobs on it. B. Digital Distractions: http://www2.digitaldistractions.org:8080/torrents.php mostly TV shows C. Pure T'n A: http://www.puretna.com/browse.php all porn all the time D. Elite Torrents: http://www.elitetorrents.org/ The best tracker site, incredibly fast downloads, ridiculously good quality vids, all the latest releases. By invitation only, and you have to pass an exam (about how to best set up your Bit Torrent client). I failed the exam 3 or 4 times before I passed :) 3. You can also try Exeem: http://www.exeem.com/ A new Bit Torrent client, different from Azureus, you type in a search keyword like Kazaa or Limewire, and it searches for a torrent file. No need for a tracker web site to post the torrents. I've found the download speeds to be a be better than the torrents you find a Torrent Reactor but there's not as much content. FYI: Torrent files have a half-life, at first the download is slow since not many people have the file, then it gets best when there are a lot of seeders (people with 100% of the file and sharing it) and it gets slower after it's popularity declines and there are fewer seeders. You'll get the best download speeds at the half-life of the torrent. Look for files with at least 6 to 10 seeders, and preferably a 1:1 ratio of seeders to leechers. 1:2 isn't bad, but something like 1:20 seeders to leechers isn't going to be sloooow. If you download movies or TV you'll also have to learn all about CODECS (software that enCOdes and DECodes the movie) and how to unzip compressed files (download WinRAR, free trial that doesn't seem to ever expire). That should be the topic of another thread. Also, if you use a router (D-Link, Linksys, whatever) you need to open up the ports (6881-6889) to make yourself connectable. Bit Torrent will still work if you don't open these ports, but your downloads will be significantly slower. Once again, that should be a topic of another thread.
  • Any similar advice for those of us with Macs? I found Azaleus too complicated, but I've had decent luck with just the regular bittorrent program... But I still can't seem to find many files that I want...
  • JS--> What are you looking for?
  • Avoid Exeem. That has spyware.
  • Downloading Sid Meier's Pirates, oh the irony! Lots of good info at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bittorrent
    Here's my list of torrent sites: del.icio.us
    Obligatory link to legaltorrents.com On preview: Exeem lite
  • I had a lot of trouble with Azuerus and the Java client it requires and Firefox. Gave up trying to make it work. So I went back to Bit Tornado which is a small, very clean app with a status light and a pause button. And yes, you can leave client running all night or however long it takes to bring something down. And you should leave it open for a while to help out the folks coming in later.
  • Is it really the smartest thing to admit that you are trying to illegally download a specific game? Especially on the front page? I mean bittorrent is as idiot proof as any downloading I've seen. Download a client, click the link, client starts. it downloads. the end. Finding the links is the difficult part.
  • not to get side tracked, but does anyone know of any current mac trackers? all the good ones seem to have gone away....
  • I have a further question - what is this .rar format I'm starting to see? I gather it's a compression format, but not one I've ever used. I generally download .avi for video (or ogm for stuff with subtitles, if it's available), but lately have see series broken up into an rar file. This WinRAR, it will open these files? And how do you stitch them back together, as there seem to be many more RARs than there would be AVIs (ie many more than 22 episodes in a season rip).
  • rar files are compressed files, just as zip files are, but the compression is generally better. the smaller files with the numbers are generally just one bigger file broken into smaller files for ease of download. When you have them all winrar will uncompress them all and join them back into one file (So all those files are probably part of one episode rather than different episodes). Once you have all the files it is pretty idiot-proof. If you have ever had to install a game on more than one CD or way back in the day with multiple floppies, it is the same thing. People used to have to "span" files over several floppies all the time once upon a time. This is just the modern version. There are a million different compression formats. Head over to Maximum Compression for a comparison of them and to get a taste of just how many formats there are.
  • Shareaza is all I need. Even has a built in media player and can preview partially downloaded torrents.
  • Azureus + RSSImporter = Tivo. Well. Not Quite. In fact not even close. But its good enough to get me The Daily Show every day, and thats good enough for me.
  • Looking for music, mostly. Though some games and pr0n. Y'know, the usual. I just keep getting "cannot find server" style errors.
  • I use azureus and I'm happy with it. I'm only interested in documentaries and use the following sites: . uknova.com . mvgroup.org ('An education in p2p', nice motto) . digitaldistractions.org
  • WinRAR is good software, definitely worth using. Also handles zip format.
  • Hello Rooster my friend, how would one set the ports to this 6881-6889? Yes I'm quite daft. Thank you.
  • Hello sir I seem to still be experiencing stupidity in regards to creating torrents. What is an external tracker, and what should I enter in that field of Aureus, when it asks me for the address of an external tracker if I am creating a torrent of some file? I mean.. do I have to find a website with a tracker, if so, how do I identify its announce data? What do I do? I know everything but this from reading the websites, but nothing seems to answer this question.